Category Archives: Finland

Becoming suicidal is often but not always indicative of mental illness. Philosophically, it simply means that you do not want to live anymore, and you don’t have to be nuts to feel way. Life’s hard for everyone, and at some point, a lot of people just can’t take it anymore and want to bail out or end the pain. Indeed, a person certainly feels no more pain after suicide.

People kill themselves for all sorts of reasons. Only 70% of suicides are clinically depressed. A lot of people commit suicide simply out of boredom, believe it or not. Some people seem to do it for absolutely no reason at all. It’s as if they did it for shits and giggles or as a way of trolling the human race. I suppose in a way, suicide is the ultimate troll. Suicides are trolling the whole damn world, every one of us.

Suicide is a mystery.

We have been studying it forever, and we still hardly know a thing about it. A man wrote a big book on suicide a while back, and at the end of the book he said he didn’t understand suicide any better at the end than when he had started.

Some countries have high suicide rates, and no one seems to know why. Other countries have low suicide rates, and no one knows why.

Hungary had high suicide rates under feudalism, monarchy, fascism, communism and now democracy. People killed themselves at the same rate in all systems.

The Japanese have always had a high suicide rate, and no one knows why. Impoverished North Korea has an extremely low suicide rate while next door ultra-wealthy Japan has a very high rate. There is no good explanation for the difference.

It may be cultural. Some societies may be more pro-suicide than others.

Anti-socialists like to say that Swedes have a high suicide rate. They claim that Swedish socialism gives people everything they need and maybe want, but it leaves them bored and unmotivated and hopeless to improve their lot, so they end it all. But all places on Earth at that latitude have a high suicide rate. It is so dark half the year that the sun only comes out for a few hours a day, and it is cold all the time. There are high suicide rates in Norway, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Russia (especially Siberia), Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland. Anyway, the Swedes had a high suicide rate even before socialism. Other countries have an identical system to Swedish socialism, and they have low suicide rates.

Actually, the suicide rate was comparatively low in the USSR and Eastern Europe under communism. However, with the transition to capitalism in 1990, suicide rates skyrocketed over the next 10-15 years as did forms of slow suicide such as drinking oneself to death. So the Communism/socialism causes suicide theory seems to be washed up. If anything, suicide seems to be linked to capitalism a lot more than it is linked to socialism or Communism.

Nigeria is one of the most hellish and nightmarish places on Earth at least from my perspective, and from any point of view, it’s basically a shithole. In fact, it is probably one of the foulest shitholes on Earth. Yet Nigerians typically among the happiest people on Earth. They’re smiling amid the stinking, crime-infested, ultraviolent ruins, while the Swedes and Japs are blowing their brains out in lavish apartments drowning in luxury.

Go figure.

Bottom line is that a lot of human behavior is either not easily explained or simply doesn’t seem to make much sense at all. People feel however they do for whatever reasons they do, and it’s often hard to figure out why.

We have had a few conservatives posting here in the past few days. These are US-style conservatives, which are the worst kind of all. US-style conservatives are absolutely banned from posting here in any way, shape or form.

Conservatism means different things in different countries, so conservatives from much of the rest of the world (except Latin America and the UK) can continue to post. Even Canadian conservatives can continue to post, as I do not mind them. It’s not conservatism itself that is so awful. Almost every country on Earth has people who call themselves conservatives, and there are conservative parties in almost every country on Earth. But being a conservative just about anywhere outside of the Americas is more or less an acceptable position for me. I probably won’t like their politics much, but I could at least look at them and say that this is an opposition I could live with.

US conservatives and their brethren in the UK, Latin America, the Philippines, Nepal and and Indonesia are quite a different beast.

I have to think hard about conservatives in Eastern Europe, especially Estonia, Latvia and the Czech Republic. These fools had such a bad experience with Communism that they went 180 degrees in the other direction. I would have to see the positions of these conservative parties in those countries to see whether they would be OK or not.

Just to give you an example, Vladimir Putin is considered to be a right-winger, and his party United Russia advocates a politics called Russian Conservatism. Looking at the party’s platform, this is not only a conservatism that I could live with but one I might even vote for!

Conservatives in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and most other places in Asia are acceptable. The conservatives in the Stans, Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia can be rather awful, particularly in the nationalist sense, but I will not ban them.

I dislike Indian conservatives, but I will not ban them.

Conservatives from the Muslim World are all acceptable. In the Muslim World, conservatism just means religious and sometimes nationalist. I can live with that. Even the ones in Iran are orders of magnitude better than the US type.

Conservatives in the Arab World are acceptable. They are mostly just religious people.

Turkish conservatives are awful, but I will not ban them. They are just religious and a particularly awful type of nationalist.

African conservatives are OK.

Conservatives in Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Italy, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania are sometimes good, sometimes pretty bad, but they are all acceptable here. Conservatism in Europe mostly means nationalism. I am actually rather fond of the conservative running Hungary, Orban. LePen conservatives leave something to be desired, but they are acceptable. They’re mostly just nationalists. Hell, I might even vote for Marine LePen! If it was down to LePen versus Macron, I would absolutely support LePen!

Conservatives from Indonesia, Nepal and Philippines are not OK. These are an “everything for the rich elite, nothing for anybody else” type of conservative. Some of them even hide under the labels of Socialist or even Communist.

The word conservative has no real inherent meaning. It means whatever people say it means.

Anyway, the conservatives in the US are pure garbage and recently they have become out and out fascists after moving in that direction for a long time. And a particularly horrible type of fascist at that, a Latin American/Filipino/Indonesian style fascist. I will not allow any US conservatives to post on this board. You all are lucky I even let you lurk here. That’s an idle threat as I can’t ban lurkers, but if they all stopped lurking, I would not mind frankly.

You all really ought to go back to the gutters you crawled out of.

PS This especially applies to Libertarians, the very worst of all the US conservative vermin. We shoot Libertarians on sight here, so you better watch out.

*This applies only to economic conservatives. If you are not an economic conservative, and your conservatism is only of the social variety or you are only conservative on race, religion, guns, law and order, respect for tradition, American nationalism, the military, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity issues, you can stay. I’m not crazy about some social conservatives, but I can live with them. I will probably even let patriotards post as long as they are not economic conservatives.

I am an American nationalist myself. I just don’t like patriotards. Of course, I very much dislike and even hate the country as it is right now, but I sure don’t want to make it worse! I have to live here too you now, and it might as well be as pleasant as possible as long I stay here.

I want what’s best for my country. I don’t want to harm this country or screw it over. That will be bad for me! And believe it or not, most US patriotards do not want what is best for the country! I have dreams of a greater and better America. It’s not impossible, but we will have to undergo some serious cultural changes. One of the reasons I am so against illegal immigration is because it is ruining my country and making this place even worse. Also illegal immigration is terrible for US workers and I am for the workers. I am against H-1B visas for the same reason – they are wrecking my country. IT workers are workers too, so they are my comrades. I want what is best for America and American workers.

I cannot live with economic conservatives. I like cancer way more than I like US conservatives. Cancer is much more decent and respectable.

Robert- In all seriousness why is Putin so great according to the Alt Right and Left? I understand he is an ‘answer’ to neocon bullshit so to speak, but let’s not delude ourselves about this guy.

Juan: He has brutally suppressed opposition to his rule, oftentimes through the murder of journalists, Chechens, whomever. It’s not a free society.

His political opposition are convicted in kangaroo courts of nothing.

Meanwhile Putin has massive investments in 0il in his country, allowing him to push policy to line his pocket books. He is worth $70 billion.

As I said above, an alliance with him and against neocons is a good thing, but this “muh poor Putin victimized by the West” rhetoric is not good.

I cannot speak for the Alt Right. The Left goes a bit too easy on Putin. Putin is definitely a thug. He has had a few people killed. Those people were spies. Intelligence agents, working for the FSB (Russian CIA). All of them were double agents. Even under Yeltsin, several US double agents were executed. In many countries, double agents are considered traitors. It is quite typical for countries to execute double agents. Double agents do not have a long life expectancy. I do not have much sympathy for such heedless and death-defying people. They chose a profoundly risky profession and they paid with their lives. So what?

Also, Putin is out for Putin. He supported Trump because Trump promised to go easy on him, while Hillary had him down as US enemy #1. Who do you expect him to support.

Russia has not been a free country since 1991 and it was not a free country before that all the way back to 1917. Russian people seem like to like benevolent dictators. It’s all they’ve ever known. Most of them don’t even believe in democracy. Putin is extremely popular, with popularity at 87%. Compare that to the popularity of US-supported Medvedev and Yeltsin at ~10%. Isn’t it better to have an authoritarian leader who everyone loves as opposed to one who everyone hates?

You must understand how many people in Russia are corrupt. Putin is about the least corrupt man in the whole country. Nearly the entire opposition is dirty and corrupt. Many to most have organized crime connections. Well documented white collar crime has been aptly demonstrated among nearly all major opposition figures. Some of these people have run afoul of Putin and have been tried and convicted in completely fair courts of law. The Russian legal system is quite fair. There are no kangaroo courts in Russia. A charge of selective prosecution could be made though. The opposition figures now in prison should have thought about that before they committed their dirty white collar crimes.

Putin does not have one nickel of investment in oil in his country to my knowledge.

The Chechen War has been going on since 1991. It’s been a Dirty War from the start, exactly like all of the counterinsurgencies the US supports. Russia’s war against the Chechens is not much different from your typical US supported counterinsurgency. Killings of opposition journalists, human rights activists and Chechen opposition figures and rebel supporters have been going on the entire time. In recent times, almost all such killings have been linked to the internal security forces of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, etc.

I agree that some journalists have been beaten up for reporting the wrong things. Probably Putin’s thugs did this. But the other Presidents murdered journalists. Putin just has a few beaten up. That’s an improvement. Mostly all Putin ever does is shut down opposition media. Most of the opposition TV has been shut down. I think some is still available on cable though. I am not sure about opposition papers, journals and magazines. Actually I believe that the opposition media is alive and well. For instance, I can point you to a CIA-run website that quotes Russian opposition figures on a daily basis. Often they are professors, researchers, journalists or think tank workers. Most are employed inside Russia. They sit there in Russia and shoot off their mouths every day and nothing seems to happen to them. Often the quotes are from Russian papers, magazines, journals, TV stations or radio stations. I assume that all of these are active in Russia. For the most part, it seems that these opposition figures are left alone. You would be amazed at the sort of crap these people say on a daily basis. A lot of them are openly treasonous, supporting the enemy in wartime. For instance, many support Ukraine in the current war.

The Internet is free in Russia and a vast proportion of Russian language media is run by the Opposition, mostly out of Europe. Finland is a major center for this. Any Russian can call up any Russian Opposition website anytime they want to. Most such sites are also in English because most of their readership is among English speakers. Opposition daily newspapers and magazines can be purchased for sale every day in Moscow. I believe the big foreign press is on sale there. I am sure you can buy a copy of the New York Times in Moscow. It is just that nobody wants to read this stuff.

The truth is that the Opposition has no support. The Opposition leader who was killed had gotten 1% support in the last election. The pro-Western Opposition, which is most of the Opposition that the US cares about, has 5-10% support, closer to 5%. Nobody likes them, nobody wants them. I have known some Russians and I asked them about the pro-US Opposition. They all told me, “Oh you mean the traitors? We don’t call them Opposition here. We call them the traitors. Everybody hates them. They support the US. Here in Russia, if you support the US, you are a traitor who supports the enemy. All Russians oppose the US as an enemy state.”

Putin has not murdered one single journalist during his most recent terms in office. In fact far fewer journalists have died under Putin than under any previous President.

There are deaths of journalists in Russia. A few journalists have been killed under Putin. These hits were mostly mob hits or personal disputes. A few were political killings in the Caucasus.

Since 1991, the vast majority of journalist killings have been in the Caucasus. These have all been related to the insurgency down there. Journalists suspected of siding with the rebels or writing about human rights abuses have been killed. This happens in most insurgencies. US-supported insurgencies are notorious for slaughtering journalists and opposition media. The US murdered opposition media in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is standard Pentagon procedure to target opposition journalists as combatants in modern warfare.

By far the most killings of journalists occurred under Boris Yeltsin. Vastly more journalists were killed under Yeltsin than under anyone else. Yeltsin was a stauch US ally and not a single disparaging word was ever written about him in the US press. He also stole elections. Putin’s elections are much freer than Yeltsin’s, and Putin is far less corrupt.

Putin is not worth $60 billion. This is just flat out fake news. In 2007, Putin had a net worth or $150,000. In 2012, Putin’s salary was $130,000. Surely his net worth now is hardly worth more than it was in 2007. Putin has not used the Presidency to enrich himself, unlike our current Scumbag in Chief. Russia’s Executive Branch is vastly more honest and less corrupt than America’s. What I think is amusing is that Americans who just elected a multibillionaire who has filled his Cabinet with billionaires and multibillionaires, are outraged that Putin is supposedly a multibillionaire himself. It’s rich, but all US criticism of anyone is usually pretty rich. We’re Number One all right. Number One in exceptionalism, self-delusion and hypocrisy.

This is going to have to be the way forward. In the next 20 years, 50% of all jobs in the US are projected to be lost due to automation. I do not believe any of the rosy scenarios idiots are trying to paint out of this. “But we will need humans to run/fix/maintain those machines!” being just one of them. Another one is, “Cool! Now most of us can just kick back and be rich now!”

At that point the only way forward will be for the humans to form a Neo-Luddite Movement and rise up and destroy the machines. This revolution may even have popular support. People are waiting in line at a checkout counter in a Big Box store. Several young men wearing black baclavas rush into the store with hammers and smash up a few machines before running away. All of the people in line cheer and a mob forms to block the security guards racing to the scene. As the Black Bloc guys race through the parking lot, cars stop and tell them to hop in on.

We could have property-destroying revolutionaries everywhere, cheered on by onlookers who obstructed police and security, refused to cooperate with law enforcement, and even offered the revolutionaries a mass base of 10’s of millions who would support, feed, drive and hide them. I’m already down with it.

I fantasize regularly now about being one of those revolutionaries, pulling up to places at all ours of the day or night, running up to some machines with a hammer, smashing away at some machines, and taking off. I’ve already committed some crimes like this before against some of my enemies, both individuals and businesses. Crime is a rush like no other that I have ever experienced. Nothing else comes close.

Are there different manifestations of capitalism just as there are of communism? For instance, the kind of “Capitalism for the rich, socialism for the poor” that has afflicted us for a long time along with crony capitalism (people in Gottfried’s managerial state helping each other out with no-bid contracts and quid pro quo) is pretty sick and poisonous.

But what about my local hardware store owner whose perception of capitalism is that he works hard for his middle-class lifestyle so he should live better than someone who doesn’t work hard? Why in any moral, sane system, would all people be rewarded equally when they don’t work equally hard? I understand plenty of wealth is inherited, and the reality of capitalism doesn’t fit the model, but there’s always a gulf between model and instantiation, isn’t there, even in communism?

Other question: I think humans are generally selfish or at least somewhat obviously motivated by their own interests, so what do you think would happen tomorrow if someone poured blandishments on you, and you woke up as a billionaire on your own island with your own mansion and jet, titty-fucking the supermodel of your choice, while two concubines fed you grapes? Would you rail against capitalism? The question isn’t rhetorical because I believe some leftists (like Lukacs) came from bourgeois to upper class backgrounds.

Thanks in advance.

Sure, there are all sorts of different capitalist models.

One I like very much is called Fordism, named after Henry Ford who is often called far rightwing and racist, but he really wasn’t. He wasn’t even much of an antisemite really. The Jews acted pretty bad here back then and he was appalled by their behavior. He said they were out for themselves and not for everyone. At the end of the supposedly antisemitic The International Jew, in which he forcefully condemns pogroms, Ford writes, “Come, Jews! I call on you to come join us to build a better America!” He wanted Jews to be Americans first and Jews second but Jews don’t tend to think like that.

Anyway Ford was hardly a reactionary. At the time, cars were quite expensive and out of the reach of most people. I would argue that they still are. He looked out at his auto plant and he thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if the average worker could afford to buy one of my nice cars here?” So Ford said, “You know what? I am going to pay my workers high enough wages so they can afford to buy my cars.”

So that is Fordism. Pay workers good wages so they can afford to buy the stuff you make or sell. There was a strong Fordist element to our society for many years, but that went out maybe in the 1970’s and now there is a vicious capitalism that thinks only of profits and never asks itself if people can still afford to buy their stuff. It’s all about paying your worker as little as possible to maximize profits. Hell a lot of companies outsource all their manufacturing so they don’t pay US workers one nickel to buy any of their nice products that they import back here from their plant. I guess paying the workers to buy your overseas built stuff is someone else’s job.

There are many other varieties that I need not go into here. Anyway almost all if not all countries are a mixture of capitalism and socialism in some form or another. The “capitalist” countries of the world are usually not that capitalist, but one can argue that maybe they have less socialism than other places. The socialist or Communist countries are just places that have a lot more socialism mixed in with their capitalism.

So it’s a bit retarded to talk about pure capitalism and pure socialism or Communism but everyone does it really because people are not well educated and also there is a tendency to think of things in their most stripped down, easiest to understand form, which helps neural efficiency but also leads to many concepts being poorly or falsely understood. Humans don’t like to think much. They want to think as little as possible and most do a great job of it. I think maybe your brain wants shortcuts too. Why not? Most other things do.

Rich Communists are rare indeed. Carlos the famous terrorist had a millionaire father who was a Communist, but that is an exception. The rich are almost always conservative, and rich liberals are often not all that rich. The rich generally want to keep as much of their money as possible no matter how they obtained, which is normal. The thing is, let’s face facts, wealthy socialists are working against their own economic interests. We rail against the class-cucked poor and working class who do the same thing, but it’s a bit more noble for a rich man do it as it’s more rational for a rich man to want to share with poorer people than it is for poor or working people to advocate giving lots of their money to the rich. The former seems like a saint; the latter seems like a moron.

I’ve long been in favor of small businesses. They cause very little damage to society. Cuba is full of small businesses now. However, your hardware store owner is deluded because he will claim that he works harder than some field worker or ditchdigger, but he really doesn’t. In fact, those outdoor workers probably work quite a bit harder than he does.

There’s a lot of silly self-justification going on with people who have managed to make a fair amount of money. Somehow they deserve every nickel of it because they did such and such noble thing (work, study, whatever) and others didn’t. And capitalist fanboys often say that the rich work harder than poor workers. Bull. I guess they figured out how stupid that was so the latest one is that the rich “worked harder and worked smarter” than others. There’s no answer to that because no one even knows what working smarter even means.

I have never believed that everyone should be equal. Why should a ditchdigger be paid the same as a surgeon? It’s crazy. Why would anyone be a surgeon. Also the surgeon is obviously contributing more to society and he studied for much longer to be a surgeon. Should he not be monetarily awarded for that.

The problem in capitalism is not inequality, which is fine by me, but instead it is the degree of it. The inequality under capitalism is so vast that it is preposterous. Doesn’t Bill Gates have as much money as 40% of the planet? If aliens landed tomorrow and you told them that one guy owns as much wealth as almost half the 8 billion population, they would shake their heads, say they’re insane morons here, and there’s obviously no sign of intelligent life, so we’re taking off.

Only in this crazy planet could there be hundreds of millions of humans who actually nod their heads like that’s normal and even stand up and cheer for it. It’s absurd the way humans think here on Earth. I doubt if it is even normal either. Earthly humans are quite idiotic. Maybe it is all down to selfishness. Humans are incredibly selfish. It’s adaptive in a sense. If you don’t put your own interests first most of the time, you will soon be dead – but it is also one of the worst traits of this supposedly highly intelligent species.

How about a pay scale? Even in Communism, pay the surgeon say eight times more than the ditchdigger. Fair? Communist societies all had pay scales. In Cuba right now the average monthly wage is ~$25. But no problem as most everything is cheap or free. For instance your rent on that salary would be $1.50/month (!) and a bowl of ice cream costs 2 cents (!). However, IT workers are being paid $2,000/month in Cuba for some reason. No idea why. Maybe to encourage people to work in the field. So you see there is fair amount of inequality in Cuba. It’s just that there people are so much more equal and less unequal there than in most places.

Communist societies need not be so poor. Belarus has an economy that is 80% Soviet style, maybe upgraded for the times. Belarus and Ukraine always had by far the highest incomes in the USSR, and it seems those are two places where Communism sort of worked. Somehow those two places figured out how to make it work. On the other hand, much of the manufacturing in the USSR was located in those two countries. The average income in what is basically Communist Belarus is $16,000/year. Almost every family has a computer and a car. Does that sound like privation to you? Communism need not lead to privation.

And Swedish society is not as equal as you think. The Swedish rich have an unbelievable amount of money. Some are among the richest people in the world. The thing about Sweden is that just about everyone is afforded a decent living. There are few very rich in Sweden, but there are also few very poor. So most everyone is somewhat more towards the middle. And Belarus and Finland have wiped out homelessness. There are zero homeless people in either country.

This is a good piece. You can find it at Kofas’ website, or I got it off of Academia.edu. Looking at his website, it appears that the rest of his stuff is pretty good too. I need to read this guy more.

I actually think he is onto something here, and you need to be hip to this argument because the Right is always trotting out this “moral decline” argument that I think needs to be countered.

by John Kofas

Historically, during periods of economic contraction, the intelligentsia, politicians, business, academic, community and church leaders invariably try to steer the debate away from what has gone wrong with the political economy to the subject of values.

This was certainly the case during the 19th century when the depressions of the 1840’s, 1870’s and 1890’s took place. Well-meaning individuals as well as opportunistic propagandists questioned society’s values, despite the fact that structural causes in the political economy accounted for the economic contraction and social ills.

A somewhat similar situation existed during the Great Depression of the 1930’s when novelists, philosophers, politicians and others decried the values of the 1920’s. There are similarities between those historical periods and the economic contraction and diminishing of the Western middle class that started during the Reagan-Thatcher era and continues to the present.

The universal topic of values served its purpose when the Industrial Revolution was causing socioeconomic problems, and it serves its purpose today when Western Civilization is captive to banks and corporate capital that are concentrating capital while weakening the social fabric and democratic institutions.

The very elites suggesting to the masses redirection toward reexamination of values are the same ones that:

1. do not practice the values that they preach;

2. are responsible for the widening socioeconomic gap and sociopolitical instability that ensues;

3. benefit by deflecting the focus of the masses from the essential problem in the systemic flaws of the political economy to values.

Naturally, there is the salient question of the vast differences in value systems between societies and individuals; differences between religious and secular values within a pluralistic society, or the differences/nuances of values within a community whether it is predominantly religious or secular.

That scholars, politicians, businesspeople, priests, and the laity have been concerned about western civilization’s decline is a story as old as Oswald Spengler who wrote about the topic after the German Empire lost the First World War, and Europe as the world’s global power center began to give ground to the US and USSR.

But are the values of Bismarck and his generation of imperialist politicians and business titans the ones that Spengler’s generation lamented against the background of the Bolshevik Revolution and its global impact? Is it the Western values of imperialism, nationalism and militarism that led to global war in 1914 that were lost along with the decline of Western Europe?

Spengler focused on Western decadence, but the question is one of the underlying assumptions of what constituted decadence and what constituted ascendancy, the degree to which humane and communitarian principles rested behind assumptions. Was it dreadful that imperialist Europe of the old elites began to decline as a result of militarist confrontation, or was it tragic that millions of people died, injured, displaced, impoverished as a result? If one values power, then one laments the decline of Europe’s power. But what if the value system is human-centered, instead of power-based?

When the Great Depression erupted to cripple societies across most of the planet, why was there a sharp turn to a discussion of values, whether by US President Roosevelt who favored a quasi-communitarian orientation that mirrored the New Deal or ultra-nationalist one that Hitler advocated who was interested in ethnic cleansing as a means of restoring the purity of the mythological Aryan race as Alfred Rosenberg conceived it and the NAZI party practiced it.

In a very strange way, the NAZI regime’s populist ethnic collectivist approach intended to achieve the same goal as that of FDR and for that matter Josef Stalin who advocated superimposed collectivism.

The Third Reich manufactured a value system that a large percentage of Germans and Austrians, accepted and lived under with the hope that it would propel them to greatness as the NAZI party defined the concept. Why did millions of people accept an utterly barbaric and inhumane and racist value system under Hitler, and why did they not retain humane principles based on the wider philosophical framework of the Enlightenment that revolutionized European culture in the 18th century?

Is it merely a question of brainwashing – no matter how good German propaganda was – or one that a large segment of the population actually embraced values because they perceived benefits accruing to them – everything from keeping their jobs to feeling great that the ruling party told them they were ‘superior’ to other races.

From the end of World War II that marked the end of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militarist-imperial Japan until the end of the Vietnam War, Western and non-Western (Communist regime) societies operated on broader values – in theory and certainly not in practice – of communitarian principles as part of an ideological mix.

Certainly in Western societies, led by the US, the value system of individualism, business progress, consumerism, commercialism of culture, and hedonism were prevalent, but the existence of the welfare state entailed tangible evidence that communitarian values mattered. The beginning of the breakdown of that value system comes when the US and the West in general begin to gradually eliminate the communitarian aspect in the societal mix because it interferes with finance capitalism and the neoliberal model of capital accumulation.

More than political trends, material conditions influence evolving value systems, something that is evident in the consumerist values (to which we must add hedonist and atomistic) of much of the world in the last fifty years. After all, values too are class-based. The relative decline of compassion for humanity, and a rise of alienation which many try to cure by going to therapy and with legal and illegal drugs, has been sharply on the increase in the last half century to the degree that we now have a Western culture of therapism thriving.

Ethical ambiguity naturally translates into ambiguity of values, thus reflecting cultural relativism. In a recent public opinion poll, the vast majority of the people in Finland agreed that if their close friend committed murder, they would notify the authorities. In the same poll, the vast majority of Greeks agreed they would not turn in their friend. Not surprisingly, Greek elites, including academics, praised the virtue of honoring friendship, while the people of Finland stressed the virtue of social conscience.

What accounts for the absence of convergence in the values of the two societies? History, tradition, religion, culture, etc., and what does this example teach us about the values of ambiguity? How could any human being with an once of moral fiber not report a case of murder? How could someone betray their friend, even in case of murder?

Beyond values of ambiguity, there is a much clearer case regarding basic values that are time-tested and transcend time and place.

1. Lying is clearly immoral. Not the kind of lying involving little lies that cause no harm but big lies that bring about great harm to a great many people. Yet, lying is at the core of both business and politics, but it is passed on as public relations. Lying to an entire nation about the reason for going to war is acceptable because it is a matter of national security. Lying to consumers about a product is acceptable because it is in the name of peddling a product or service.

2. Stealing is clearly immoral. I was hardly surprised to read stories about people across southern Europe actually stealing food because of the current hard times. However, stealing in the framework of institutionalized ‘appropriation’ of government subsidies to make banks stronger, is morally acceptable. Yet this is a process that forces people to steal food. Are we back in the era of Victor Hugo’s Jean Val Jean?

3. Killing is clearly immoral. However, mass killings of collateral damage victims in time of war is just fine. Why do human beings categorically reject the individual who kills her husband that abuses her but accept mass killings in wars? What does this tell us about our values and how they are molded?

How does a politician, a journalist, an academic, or much less a leading businessperson tell the masses to reexamine their values against the background of austerity economics that benefit those preaching reexamination of values?

For more than half a century, the same elites now preaching reexamination of values were advocating consumerism, commercialization of culture, hedonism, and atomistic proclivities, all in the name of an open society when in reality the only interest was the thriving of the market economy.

Having conditioned citizens as consumers steeped in that frame of mind and value system, how do elites now try to tell them that embracing everything from nature to God, everything from family values to community values, filter down, and even if it did, what exactly does that do for the high structural unemployment and underemployment, low wage structure, lack of opportunities for college graduates, and lack of job security?

When Ronald Reagan was beginning to dismantle the welfare state and strengthen the corporate welfare state, his administration, various think tanks, journalists, academics, clergy and business leaders began to speak of values, namely ‘family values’.

One odd thing about many of the people advocating ‘family values’ is that they themselves were not practicing them. Another odd thing was that these values advocates were interested in pushing society in the direction of conformity to the changing status quo, so value discussion was one tool they used.

Of course, there was a contradiction between ‘family values’ rhetoric and policies – government and business – that were contributing to undermining the family by forcing both parents to work, in some cases at second jobs to make ends meet.

At the same time, reorientation to values discussion did not mean that workers must stop shopping, given that the population remained under the spell of increasingly intrusive advertising that helped shape consumerist and atomistic values. Are we witnessing a Western moral decline or merely a decline of the capitalist system and its apologists trying desperately to distract the masses by shifting the focus to values?

I can’t believe they did this. There is absolutely nothing progressive or leftwing about the EU. Getting rid of Net Neutrality is catastrophic for the people but it’s great for the elites, the Deep States, the rich and the corporations.

You see, in the West, the rich and corporations already have 100% of the MSM because under capitalism, freedom of the press belongs anyone who can own a media outlet. No one else has any freedom of press at all. The rich, the elites, the corporations and the Deep States already have 100% of the media in the West.

The one thing they do not control is the Net, and boy are they mad about that. Because, not to toot my horn, but the Net is a place that even a radial maniac like me who spins a narrative completely opposite to all the poison the rich, the elites, the corporations and the Deep States sell can still get a voice. My site loads as fast as Fox News or CNN.

But without Net Neutrality, the rich, the elites, the corporations and the Deep States would get to put everyone selling views they don’t like in the slow, slow, slow lane because it would be very expensive to get in the fast lane so it would be similar to the cost barriers to entry to the MSM.

So getting rid of Net Neutrality means that the Net would become just like the rest of the Western media shithole – completely controlled by the the rich, the elites, the corporations and the Deep States with 0% outlets for any dissenters from their controlled narrative.

Another problem with getting rid of Net Neutrality is that we may be seeing a lot of lobbying in the near future whereby service providers bribe ISP’s to restrict access to the services provided by competing companies, etc. Revolting, isn’t it?

Interestingly, three countries within the EU – Netherlands, Slovenia and Finland – already have a range of net neutrality rules enshrined in law.

Yes, and all three of these countries will have their Net Neutrality rules overturned by Brussels! The EU overturning countries’ sovereignty again. The EU looks more and more catastrophic by the day. I think the progressive project of the day is to get rid of the EU. If we have to ally with the Right to do so, so be it. Nazis are scumbags, but I would much rather ally with Nazis than pro-corporate, pro-rich supporters of multiculturalism, the Cultural Left Freakshow and radical neoliberalism – the Elite Project Du Jour at Deep State MSM outlets like like the New York Times. You know our elites really suck when Nazis look better in comparison!

A series of amendments to a regulation on how internet traffic is managed in Europe were all rejected by MEP’s.

See how the disgusting BBC spun that? That’s how the Corporate Cancer has been spinning Net Neutrality – by calling it “regulating the Internet.” They have been selling it to people on a fake platform of “don’t regulate the Internet.” But if there’s anything on Earth that’s crying for regulation, it’s the sewer called the Internet. Almost all of the problems of the Net are caused by the fact that it is totally unregulated.

Snömannen are the Bigfoots of Scandinavia. They are found in the polar regions of Sweden, Finland and Norway. They are found in Lapland and the arctic regions. The description is similar to the one for Bigfoots. Sightings are few but they are as recent as 1985.

It looks like they are probably real, but there are only a few sightings of them. Yeti types are definitely known in recent years from Karelia and the Kola Peninsula, both of which are to the east of Finland. In this part of Russia, the yetis tend to inhabit mostly the far northern region where there are fewest people. It’s not surprising that there might be a few in the far north of Scandinavia also. Looks like a range extension of the Russian far north yeti type hominid.

I want to make clear that I don’t think any of these creatures are apes on monkeys running around in the woods. They are relict hominids, similar to the Flores Man which was recently discovered in Flores Island, Indonesia. Flores Man probably lived on Flores for 800,000 years, going extinct only ion the late 1800’s. They were actually discovered in 1960, but the skeletons were reported as “pygmy” Homo sapiens and were dismissed. The finding was actually published in a major anthropological journal.

There was a huge fight about Flores Man when he was found, the main argument being that finds were just Homo sapiens with various genetic disorders of this or that type. If and when more relict hominids are uncovered, we will see similar arguments that they are simply humans (Homo sapiens) with strange genetic disorders.